Couch Gag

a short story about being delusional and insane and obnoxious but also lowkey gorgeous

I convinced my boyfriend into letting me cuck him with a D-list stand-up comedian. I think the only reason Sam agreed to it was because he knew I would break up with him if he didn’t let me consensually cheat on him. I'm too nice of a person to nonconsensually cheat. And It’s not like it’s every day you get to fuck a niche internet microcelebrity.

Also, I didn’t have a car. It would have been too embarrassing to have the conversation that happens with every Uber driver working at 2 AM outside of Austin; I would say Hi, pick up for Margot? and he would say Yes, where are you headed this late at night, you gorgeous, sexy, vulnerable woman? and I would say Oh, just going to go be a whore, teehee. It’s all very degrading. But convincing my boyfriend to masturbate in the driver’s seat of his 2005 Subaru Outback to the idea of me having sex with his favorite podcast host Jared Mueller? That’s a win for feminism. 

“All celebrities are into really weird sex, that’s why they were all friends with Epstein,” Sam said as he put the car in park in front of the house. He was ripping strips of leather off the worn-out steering wheel cover and letting the chunks fall to the floor of the car.

“I don’t think Jeffery Epstein was inviting podcast hosts to his private island,” I said. I leaned over the center console and kissed Sam on the cheek, then I turned his face to look me in the eyes.

I loved him so much, but I was so bored. It wasn’t his fault, he just loved me too much. He loved me so much he was willing to let me have sex with someone else. I think that’s too much love, like at some point it has to circle back around to being hate. Horseshoe theory or something. Or I just wanted him to hate me as much as I had grown to hate him.

“If a cop drives by make sure they don’t see you masturbating,” I said checking over myself in the rearview mirror. My eyelashes were so long that my mascara had smeared onto my top eyelid under my eyebrow. I licked my finger and wiped it away. 

“You look gorgeous,” Sam said. 

“You always say that.” 

“I love you.”

I slammed the car door shut behind me. 

---

I planned out my whole set on the drive to Jared’s, rehearsing what I would say to him to make a good first impression since I was a comedian too. I thought maybe if the sex was good enough he would take me under his wing. For my opener, I would ask him if he liked my little Mary Jane shoes with frilly white socks that only little girls wore, and then he would say yes. Normally you can’t count on audience participation during a routine, but since he wants to have sex with me he’s guaranteed to say yes. Then I would call him a pedophile because they do look like little girls’ shoes. And because it’s very funny to accuse people of being pedophiles. 

Then I would point out that he’s 35 and I’m only 20, and I would go into my bit about how if you remember 9/11 and you’re having sex with someone who wasn’t even born yet, you’re a pedophile. After that, I would obviously tell him I was just joking and then he would see that I’m not like the other 20-year-old fangirls and I was okay with pointing out our age difference and making light of it. After all, Eva Braun was 23 years younger than Hitler. 

After that, we would have sex and I would reveal that my boyfriend was outside jerking off to the whole thing and we’d both have a good laugh at his expense, then I’d leave. And I would go back to my boring life with my boring boyfriend.

I knocked on the door and Jared answered. Only funny men are allowed to be as conventionally unattractive as he was. He was shaped like a bowling ball and only had a few inches of height on me. But he was famous, so he was hot. He had the classic Benjamin Franklin ponytail, a fashion staple for men that were severely balding on top but refused to let go of the rest of their hair. A hairstyle that screamed desperation almost as much as his willingness to hook up with a girl a decade younger than him after just seven Twitter DM’s were exchanged. 

“Can you take your shoes off?” Jared asked the second I stepped across the threshold. 

Fuck. I hadn’t even considered he would ask me to take my shoes off. That was my whole bit. I panicked.

“That’s very Asian of you,” I said. Fuck. I should have called him Tarrantino.

“I’m Italian,” He said, closing the door behind me while I stood bent over unbuckling my shoes. I watched Sam’s car peel down the street from between my legs before the door closed.

Jared looked like he was grinning, maybe I hadn’t blown it yet. He gestured for me to sit on the couch and said he was going to get us some wine.

The hardwood was immediately cold on my bare feet and sent shockwaves up my body with every step I took to sit on the worn-out orange sofa. The walls were such a dirty shade of rose pink it looked like someone had made it their personal project to develop lung cancer in a single room. A violently purple end table sat to the right of the couch and an ugly purple floor lamp with an orange shade was to the left. Behind my head on the wall was a painting of a two-dimensional sailboat on the ocean in the middle of two puffy white clouds. In the middle of the room between the couch and TV sat a large oval-shaped rug with rings of different colors. 

I’ve seen this room before. I know I have. 

---

After a while, I asked where the bathroom was. I stood at the sink, my hands gripping the ledge as I stared at myself in the mirror. I only had one glass of wine but I realized too late it was mixing with my Adderall and it made me woozy. 

He thought I was funny, or at least he really wanted to have sex with me because so far he had laughed at almost every single joke I had made. Maybe I wouldn’t have to go back home with Sam to our boring life. Ideally, Sam would come barging into Jared’s home looking for me and since Texas is a stand your ground state, I wouldn't even have to deal with breaking up with him. Sam would never do something as cool as die. 

Jared gave me a wavy, electric blue-colored wig and asked me to put it on for him in the bathroom and that when I came back he wanted me to talk in a husky, raspy voice. And also he wanted me to be completely naked. I didn’t really care, older men always need a bunch of weird extra shit to get hard.

“Hi, I’m Margot. How are y’all folks doing tonight?” I tried to say in a husky voice. I attempted to lower the pitch of my voice and sound more scratchy, but instead of the voice of a hot girl in a blue wig that was staring at me, something more Al Pacino came out. I leaned in closer to the mirror, narrowing my eyes at myself. 

Hi, I’m Margot. How are y’all folks doing tonight? was how I introduced myself at open mics and was a sentence I never wanted to say again after tonight. Hopefully, Jared would decide he liked me so much he would take me on his stand-up tour with him and I would never have to introduce myself to an audience ever again. They would already know who I was.

“Hi, I’m Margot. How are y’all folks doing tonight?” I tried again, for hopefully the last time in my life, this time speaking from the back of my throat, stretching the vocal cords and feeling the tension as they rubbed against each other. I figured that was as close as I was going to get.  

Jared said he wanted to give me a full body massage before we did anything else, just so I would be limber enough to do whatever he wanted. Sam never gave me any full-body massages. All he had for me was unconditional love.

“Hi Jared,” I croaked out in my new, raspy voice as I walked back out to the living room. He had laid a blanket down in the middle of the rug and had a bottle of what looked like massage oil. He patted the center of the blanket, inviting me to come lay down in the middle. 

I laid down on my stomach at first, but he then put his arms under me and flipped me over so I was looking up at him. Sam wouldn’t be able to flip me over like that. 

“Close your eyes, I want you to relax,” he said, brushing the synthetic wig hair out of my eyes. I allowed myself to relax, drifting into an almost trance-like state as Jared squirted something from the bottle onto his hands and began to rub my shoulders and chest. The liquid was thicker and goopier than massage oil, I assumed it was lotion. He took his hands off me to get more.

“D’oh!”

I opened my eyes without lifting my head to see he had spilled the lotion all over his hands. I felt him rub the excess off on my legs and then scooted forward, closer to my face, about to touch my cheeks with his lubed-up hands. 

“You don’t have to put that on my face, it’s okay,” I said, knowing the second that goo touched my face my pores would be permanently clogged.

“No, it’s good for you! I promise,” Jared said. I would have felt rude to tell him no. 

I closed my eyes. He started on my cheeks and rubbed his way to my forehead and all across my nose. He massaged the lotion into my temples. I guess if stand-up ever failed he could make it as a horny masseur. 

“You look beautiful, Marge,” Jared said after he finally took his hands off my face.

Oh god, he doesn’t even know my name. 

“It’s Margot, not Marge,” I said sheepishly, opening my eyes and smiling at him.

“Shhh no, just be Marge.” He said, and he lifted my yellow hand to kiss it. 

My yellow hand.

I shot up immediately and I looked down at my body and saw that everywhere he had touched was a bright, metallic yellow. I turned to look into the black mirror of the dead TV and saw a reflection I didn’t recognize. It was a funhouse mirror, but instead of stretching me to be fat or skinny, I was a young Marge Simpson. 

The room started to spin. The orange couch. The pink walls. The purple furniture. The boat painting. I had recognized it before but I couldn’t place it. It was all from The Simpsons living room. A room I had known my whole life but never actually been in. Then I was one of them.

“I. Am. Not. Marge. Simpson.” I said to Jared, as I stood up and yanked the wig out of my hair, throwing it on his face. I grabbed the closest blanket and wrapped myself in it and ran out the front door.

I ran down the street to Sam’s car. I loved him. I love him. And even more than I loved him I regretted telling him to park further down the street so Jared wouldn’t be able to see him. I wanted to be bored and safe again. With Sam. 

I threw open the passenger door and got in. Sam looked up at me with wide, puffy eyes.

“I think we have to break up,” Sam said through sobs, “You want someone more exciting than me.”

I sat there, dripping sweat mixed with yellow semi-permanent body paint into the seat of his car. He was right.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said.

The rest of the title credits roll. Created by Matt Groening.